To take stock of what Vice President Joseph Biden said last weekend, noted by people who note things and thus trending toward being heralded to “Gaffe” status:

#1:  “We misread how bad the economy was.”
This, I think, is extrapulated to the “Nobody could have predicted” syndrome.  A politician should know never to say that, at least, as when “nobody could have predicted”, one can immediately google and find the “everybody” who predicted it.
This floats past fairly easily, even if it was plastered in giant type at the top of “Huffington Post” on Sunday.  The Politico-Economic picture remains the same.  In four years, Obama will be up for re-election.  The classic question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?“  will determine his re-election chances.  If you under-estimated the severity of the economic picture, now is the time to say so — six months in instead of four years in.

#2:  BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?
BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.  What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues.   If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

Considering the way this plays in the world — much of it assumes Israel is America’s 51st state anyway, which includes headlines that include “Go Ahead Bibi:  Drop the Bomb“, and considering the dangers of this statement in relation to the hoped for “regime change” in Iran, President Obama had to walk this one back.
Perhaps with forked tongue?  The message is out there, I’d guess.

But these less than political smooth statements are at least more meaningful than Biden’s “Hide!  Hide!  Hide!” reaction to the Avian Flu, which you just go ahead and chalk up to “just one of those things.”  They bear down on policy decisions.  Of course, if you want to flicker around to personality political calculations, you might go down the route of the “Biden versus Clinton” game and assume Biden is getting air-time, despite the fact that he will say something, to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2012 Presidential Bid.  If you want to play that game.

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